A failure to protect our water

By Tim White / The Fayetteville Observer

Published: Monday, April 14, 2014 at 02:09 PM.

Sometimes our state motto gets it backward.

Esse quam videri — to be, rather than to seem — isn’t the North Carolina we know. Especially in matters involving the protection of our water supply, we’ve long qualified as Videri quam esse — to seem, rather than to be.

Lately, our state bureaucrats aren’t even trying to seem. They’re blatantly ignoring their obligation to protect us and doing what’s best for their bedmates, Big Business.

I’m not sure about the precise Latin translation (a classicist will surely help me out with that), but I’d say our state’s environmental-protection motto is more like: We’re North Carolina, and we don’t give a damn.

How else, really, to explain the Environmental Management Commission’s running to court last week to appeal a Wake County Superior Court judge’s ruling that it has the authority to — gasp! — enforce the law?

The judge, Paul Ridgeway, told the commission it’s been misinterpreting the law when it claims it can’t make Duke Energy clean up its coal-ash ponds — like the one that broke open in early February, sending tons of toxic ash and water into the Dan River.

Esse quam videri — to be, rather than to seem — isn’t the North Carolina we know. Especially in matters involving the protection of our water supply, we’ve long qualified as Videri quam esse — to seem, rather than to be.

Lately, our state bureaucrats aren’t even trying to seem. They’re blatantly ignoring their obligation to protect us and doing what’s best for their bedmates, Big Business.

I’m not sure about the precise Latin translation (a classicist will surely help me out with that), but I’d say our state’s environmental-protection motto is more like: We’re North Carolina, and we don’t give a damn.

How else, really, to explain the Environmental Management Commission’s running to court last week to appeal a Wake County Superior Court judge’s ruling that it has the authority to — gasp! — enforce the law?

The judge, Paul Ridgeway, told the commission it’s been misinterpreting the law when it claims it can’t make Duke Energy clean up its coal-ash ponds — like the one that broke open in early February, sending tons of toxic ash and water into the Dan River.

Citizen and environmental groups have begged the state to order the utility to clean up those waste ponds, many of which are unlined, allowing arsenic and heavy metals to leach into groundwater, and eventually into our water supply. But the state wouldn’t do it. And when some of those groups filed suit to force action, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources filed its own, a legal maneuver to derail the environmentalists.

Meanwhile, the watchdog group American Rivers issued its annual list of the nation’s 10 most-endangered rivers. Only two are east of the Mississippi. One is North Carolina’s Haw River. The other is South Carolina’s Edisto.

This is of more than passing interest for those of us who live in the Cape Fear region, where our namesake river is the biggest single source of drinking water. The Cape Fear is formed near the Chatham-Lee county line, where the Deep River joins the Haw.

When you read about how badly polluted the Haw is, remember that its water is flowing nearby. The Haw is also the faucet that fills Jordan Lake, a source of water and recreation for millions.

The river is plagued by sewage spills from aging treatment plants and pipes, and by runoff from agriculture, industry and highways.

The state has a plan on the books to protect the river and the reservoir, but the General Assembly has delayed it because people with deep pockets don’t want to empty them on pollution prevention. Instead, lawmakers funded a wacky plan that puts giant floating Mixmasters in Jordan Lake, to stir it up and, someone hopes, prevent the massive algae blooms that plague the lake. But that won’t intercept one ounce of pollution. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying - and trying to dupe the voters.

This isn’t about web-footed tree-huggers tilting against windmills (or floating paddlewheels). This is about poisons in our water supply. This is about our legislators and environmental agencies selling us, and our health and safety, out to the high-roller industries that make lavish donations to the right politicians.

This is about a state government earning a new motto — we’re North Carolina and we don’t give a damn.

If we’re going to change that, it’s time to speak up and do something. It begins with making the pols more fearful of the voters than they are of the captains of industry who own them.

Tim White is the Observer’s editorial page editor. He can be reached at 486-3504 or twhite@fayobserver.com.